A Taxonomy of Love

by Rachael Allen

  “Ha. Nice try.” He cranks the engine and guns it to school so we can get a decent parking spot.

  Dean parks the truck beside Ethan’s. My phone says I still have five minutes before I have to go inside. At home, I am the lone blue fish sharing a little backyard pond with three orange fish. At school, there is an ocean of orange fish, and they’re all swimming in a different direction from me.

  Jayla skips over and knocks on my window with a huge grin. Having a girlfriend is awesome. Sometimes she asks me really complicated questions like, “Do you think I’m prettier than Hope Birdsong?” and if I don’t answer fast enough, she gets really mad. But other times, she lets me take off her bra when we’re in her den watching movies, so, like I was saying, awesome. I’ve barely gotten my door open when she laces her fingers through mine. She squeezes my hand, and my scales flicker to orange until she lets me go. I put my lips to hers, trying to drink up all her normal. She throws her arms around me and shoves her tongue in my mouth. I tic once, a small shoulder shrug, and she ignores it like usual.

  When she pulls away, I see a flash of white hair over her shoulder. My eyes go from make-out-haze-halfway-shut to wide-freaking-open. I don’t mean to do it, but I watch Hope cross the parking lot.

  “Hey, so, guess what!” a part of me hears Jayla saying. “Oklahoma! auditions are today.”

  The good parts of my brain try to concentrate on my girlfriend. Her eyes lit up with excitement, mile-long eyelashes curling up at the ends. But the bad parts are multiplying like a virus, and before I know it, I’m staring again.

  Hope is one of the cool girls now. Not the girls who sparkle through the hallways leading their jock boyfriends behind on leashes. The other cool girls. The ones who wear torn tights and think attendance is optional.

  Most people think she’s bad news. Angry. I can see the truth. She’s so sad it hurts to breathe.

  She leans against the wall of the school, one leg bent, high-heeled boot tapping against the brick. Her thumb pushes down on her index finger, and then each of the others in turn. Four little pops that her mom tells her will give her man knuckles.

  “. . . thinking about singing ‘Many a New Day,’ but I really feel like ‘Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’’ showcases my voice better.” Jayla cocks her head to the side like she’s weighing her options again.

  Now that Jayla’s moved, Hope is directly in my line of sight. The wind blows her hair across her eyes, and when she pushes the strands away, we’re staring right at each other, and there’s a beam of light holding us together, and I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to. I gasp, but it’s more like the air is being forcibly sucked out of me. And part of my mind can hear Jayla saying, “Are you okay?” but her voice seems so far away.

  She touches my shoulder, and the light between Hope and me shatters. Wow. Was I really just doing that? First of all, Jayla could have noticed, like, ANYTIME. Second of all, I swear I’m not that big of a dick. This is something the old Spencer—the one who was stupidly in love with Hope—would have done. I look at my girlfriend—my beautiful, standing-in-front-of-me girl-friend—and cup her chin in my hand.

  “Hi,” she whispers.

  “Hi.” I kiss her, just for a second. “You are going to nail this audition. You’re the best singer in this entire school.”

  She smiles, but it doesn’t last. “The best girl singer,” she says. “Justin Irby is the best boy singer. Maybe even best overall.”

  “Well, then, you’ll be Laurey, and he’ll be the main singer cowboy guy.”

  “Curly.”

  “Yeah, him.”

  “I don’t know.” She twists her fingers together, and the smile she gives me isn’t even a half smile. More like a quarter or an eighth. “I guess I just worry because Justin has blond hair and blue eyes, and what if Ms. Pickett doesn’t want—” She stops and shakes her head. “No. You know what? I’m a freshman now. Maybe things will be different than they were in middle school.”

  “What do you—”

  “Forget it.” She smiles and kisses me.

  I kiss her back until Dean flicks me in the back of the head.

  “Get a room.” He snickers like a third-grader. “Hey, Spencer, you’re turning red. What, are you embarrassed?”

  He flicks me again, and I yank the strap on his backpack, cinching it from its artfully low-slung position to somewhere up around his armpit. And before you know it, we’re chasing each other around the car.

  Jayla makes a big show of rolling her eyes at us before planting one last kiss on my lips. “See you at lunch, okay?”

  She struts off toward the trailers behind A Building, her straight black hair bouncing against her shoulders, but I have to go to C, which means Dean and I will be walking directly past Hope. She’s just ten yards away. And then three. Our eyes meet again, but this time it’s a tiny beam of light. Like a strand of uncooked spaghetti. It would be really easy to break it. If I wanted to. Instead, I wave at her. My hand just shoots up and does it out of habit, before I can think about whether or not it’s okay.

  It’s been so long since I’ve waved, or said anything at all. At first I think she’s going to pretend she didn’t see, but then her fingers lift just a few inches away from her leg. Just for a second. Maybe the mini-wave was one of those involuntary things. Maybe it was because she didn’t want her friends to see. Dean sees.

  “Why is that psycho bitch waving at you?” he says. Loudly. His voice carries across the sidewalk and bashes itself against Hope’s boots.

  She narrows her eyes, and the fingers fluttering by her side ball into a fist. She flips her wrist upward as we walk past. Gives him the finger.

  Maybe she’s angrier than I thought.

  Everything I’ve worked on in practice has led up to this moment. Ethan smells like sweat and my impending doom. We’re only twelve inches apart on the mat. And that’s only until Coach blows his whistle. I stand opposite him, hands ready. A muscle in his jaw tenses, and for a second, I’m twelve years old again and Ethan is a manticore, towering over me with flames for eyes and three rows of serrated teeth.

  But then the whistle blows, and my body snaps into some sort of wrestler autopilot mode. The nervousness dissolves. My tics practically disappear. I am muscle memory and high-octane adrenaline. I am the sum of every wrestling practice I’ve ever been to.

  We test each other out. What if I go for his leg? What if I go for a sweep? What happens if I tap his neck down? Everything is moves and countermoves, and then, oh shit, he rolls my neck and gets an underhook. He’s got my leg. Before I can blink, I’m on my ass, and he’s climbing the tree, inching toward my hips with a body made of cement. I lock my arms around him and try to resist, but I can only hold out for so long, and it’s a takedown.

  The guys go crazy. Ours was easily the closest match-up so far. I grab my water bottle and wait for the next session to start, and because we’re playing King of the Mat, Ethan’s wrestling again. He beats the guy just heavier than him, and then the guy just heavier than that guy, which makes me feel like less of a loser. Ty Mathers, last year’s 152 starter, finally beats him, but since it was Ethan’s fourth match-up and Ty’s got at least ten pounds on him, it was pretty much a given that he’d get clobbered. There’s no way you can win King of the Mat unless you’re in one of the highest weight classes, but that’s not the point.

  I’m watching Ty and this guy from my English class go at it, when Ethan comes over and stands right beside me. I’ve spent all of practice trying to dodge him—stayed on the opposite side of the room during Coach’s overly long welcome speech, during warm-ups and stretching. But when I weighed in, Coach made a comment about how much taller I’d gotten, and how was he ever going to find another 113 guy as good as me. And then a few guys later, when it was Ethan’s turn, another comment: “Look at that. You and Spencer are only four pounds apart now.”

  Ethan’s head snapped up, not unlike a spider whose web just got jounced by a fly. And since that moment, I’ve been gett
ing these prickly feelings, like something is crawling up my back and into my ear. I’d be practicing moves with my drill partner, and I’d turn, and there he’d be, sizing me up. Like I was on his radar, and any time I did something too good—ping! Bloodlust activated.

  Ethan doesn’t say anything as he stands beside me. Just crosses his arms over his chest and glares straight ahead, all menacing-like, while he invades my personal bubble.

  He clears his throat, and I nearly jump out of my skin. “You were better than I thought you’d be.” His voice is gruff, and he doesn’t take his eyes off King of the Mat. My brain struggles to process whether I’ve been complimented or threatened.

  “Thanks?”

  He nods. “You’ve got a good fireman’s carry. But you need to work on your Radman Ride.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” It just slips out.

  “The 149 guy at NC State is graduating this year, and I’ve got the coaches eyeing me for his spot. I guess I felt responsible for 138 or something.”

  I think about 113. How we don’t even have any good prospects to fill my spot this year.

  “I get that.”

  He glances around, almost like he’s checking to make sure no one’s listening. “Find me next practice, and I’ll help you, okay?”

  Ethan Wells wants to help me. Shock doesn’t begin to cover it. “Yeah, okay. Thanks, man.”

  He nods and makes kind of a grunting noise before walking off.

  I watch the rest of the match-ups, sometimes tic-ing, sometimes not, but all the guys on the wrestling team know about my Tourette’s and are pretty cool. Except maybe Ethan, but honestly, now that I’m thinking about it, I can’t remember the last time he made fun of me. Eventually, a King of the Mat is crowned—a gargantuan 195-er that everyone calls Zippy. Zippy does some gratuitous victory preening until Coach makes us go to the locker room. He’s gripping a roll of masking tape in one hand and some markers in the other. It’s time for the Just Say No speech. He clears his throat even though everyone is already paying attention.

  “Signing this means you’re serious. No drinking, no drugs, no smoking. Nothing that will pollute your body and jeopardize the season. You may wrestle one on one, but this is a team sport. What you do affects everyone. That’s why we sign this together. An unbroken ring.”

  I remember when he did this last year. All the little hairs on my arms stood at attention, and I got that soaring feeling, like when you watch the climax of a good sports movie. I wanted to jump up and yell something. And then I wanted to wrestle the best match of my life. My dad would be so damn proud. Because Dean may have hunting and baseball and everything else in common with Dad, but wrestling is our thing. Especially now that Dean quit.

  Coach starts the tape over the door of the locker room and winds his way around. Across one wall, around a window, and then back over the door, connecting the ends in a wobbly circle.

  I grab a Sharpie and sign my name like I did last year. Then I hand it to the freshman behind me, smiling at the look of utter awe on his face. I want to tell him that I get it—that signing still makes me feel that way, too. Instead, I clap him on the back so hard his knees buckle. It’s pretty much the same thing.

  I grab my stuff and wait for Dean in the parking lot. About twenty minutes later he shows up fresh from football practice and throws his sweaty bag in the back of the truck. “How was practice?”

  “Ethan beat me at King of the Mat.”

  “Coach let you guys do King of the Mat at the first practice?”

  “Yep.”

  “Sucks. That he beat you, I mean.” He pulls out of the parking lot, but he turns the wrong way.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Granger Packing Plant.”

  “Dude, you know I can’t eat anything there. Just take me home first.”

  “I don’t have time. It’s senior-prank planning, and I’m already late because Coach kept me after practice.”

  “I’m not going. And anyway, why are you doing a prank so early in the school year?”

  “Ethan thinks it’ll throw off the administration. And unless you want to tuck and roll out of my truck right now, you’re going.”

  “Our truck.”

  I harass him the rest of the way there, but it’s no good. We are going to Granger Packing Plant. Dean has spoken. It is law. And during normal, non-wrestling-season months, that would be totally cool because Granger is this awesome place with peach orchards spreading toward the horizon, playgrounds and tractor rides, a catwalk hanging above the inside of the plant where you can watch the peaches getting sorted on giant conveyer belts. We used to go there for a field trip once a year in elementary school, and I was always struck by how the packing line seemed like a living thing, with a whirring, robotic heart, and arteries that pumped peaches to grocery stores and lunch boxes. But going today, when I’m on a strict diet, sitting in the restaurant/general store that is packed to the brim with peach cider, peach preserves, peach cobbler with peach ice cream spooned on top, will prove to be an exercise in extreme frustration. Or temptation. Probably some of both.

  Basically, here’s what I’m working with:

  A TAXONOMY OF ACCEPTABLE FOODS TO EAT DURING WRESTLING SEASON

  I trail after my brother into the giant building with the never-ending string of rocking chairs under its green-striped awning. Two ladies from Pam’s Sunday school class stop us on the way in, just to say hi, how are you, how’s your family. A bunch of senior guys and a few girls are already packed into three wooden tables. Dean gets peach ice cream and country-fried steak as a pre-dinner snack. I get a Diet Coke.

  A few other underclassmen are sprinkled around the tables, people who are dating seniors or who, like me, got dragged here against their will. And Hope. She’s curled up in a chair next to Mikey. I don’t know what it is that makes me pick her out in a crowd of people, but sometimes I wish I could have it surgically removed. I’m still kind of freaked about what happened in the parking lot this morning, but I’m just going to lock that in the Behavioral Anomalies box and throw away the key.

  Dean groans. “What’s she doing here?” he whispers.

  I don’t know the precise details of their breakup, but whenever they see each other, they both get this look like they’re about to explode, bits of anger flying everywhere like shrapnel.

  “I don’t know.” I remember hearing she was hooking up with Mikey. Are they still together? Mikey whispers something in her ear, and she giggles. I guess that means yes.

  Dean narrows his eyes. “Just so we’re all clear, this is a senior prank.” He looks pointedly at Hope. “I don’t want to see any of y’all the night of the prank, and you better not tell anyone, either.”

  Hope whips a set of keys out of her pocket and swings them around her index finger. “You see these? They’re the keys to the school. I swiped them off the table in the copy room, which means this prank wouldn’t even be happening without me. Which means I’m going.”

  Gauntlet. Thrown.

  She and Dean stare at each other for two long seconds. I get the feeling if I waved my hand in the space between their eyes, it would feel a lot like passing through a lightning bolt. Mikey’s looking back and forth between them like he can see it, too, and says, “You brought Spencer.”

  They both turn to look at him. “What?”

  “Spencer.” He seems flustered. “He’s not a senior, either, and you brought him, so back off my girl.”

  Hope flinches at the words “my girl,” but when he slings his arm around her shoulder, she doesn’t push it away.

  “Yeah, but he’s not coming to the prank,” says Dean. “He doesn’t even want to be here.”

  I nod. “Truth.” Even less so now.

  Hope pushes her chair back. Mikey catches her hand. “Where’re you going, babe?”

  She shrugs. “If y’all don’t want me here, I’ll go. I wouldn’t want to bother Dean.” She squeezes as much scorn into his name as she possibly can. And then sh
e adds the clincher. “But I’m taking the keys.”

  Dean groans and rubs his hand down his face. Hope pauses, eyebrows slightly raised, lips pursed in a way that’s almost sexy.

  “Just. Don’t leave yet,” he says. “Will you sit back down while we figure the rest of this shit out?”

  She plops down like it doesn’t matter to her either way, but she knows she’s already won.

  Dean and Mikey shout across the table at each other, with Ethan occasionally jumping in. The three of them are the ringleaders of the prank, but even though Dean likes to drink and cause minor trouble, he’s more of a straightedge (parties just enough not to be a goody-goody, takes AP classes, but tears it up at baseball and football). Mikey, on the other hand, is apathy personified. So yeah, they get along greaaat.

  The argument ends with Dean grudgingly agreeing that they can’t pull off the prank without Hope’s help. The best part: Mikey telling Dean not to get his panties in a twist, and Dean sulking in his peach ice cream. Plus, Hope’s face lights up with this thousand-kilowatt triumphant smile. It’s too bad she almost never smiles anymore. Hers are the best. I grin and sip my Diet Coke and decide maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing coming here after all. Unfortunately, Dean notices.

  “Hey, Spencer, you want some of my ice cream?”

  “No.”

  “You sure? Not even one bite?”

  He holds the spoon so close the smell of fresh peaches threatens to break me.

  “You are an asshole.”

  Dean smirks with the kind of satisfaction that only comes from torturing your brother. “It’s sooo good. Like even better than usual. It’s all soft and creamy, like the kind Grandaddy used to make with his old hand-crank ice cream churner. And the peaches. Ripe, but mild. It’s like they picked the perfect—”

  “Dude. Shut up about the damn ice cream,” Ethan says, smacking Dean’s arm. That’s when I realize Ethan isn’t eating, either.